…
By Jo Nova
On closing it down Musk said: “USAID is a criminal organisation. Time for it to die.””
On Friday last week, Elon Musk and DOGE wanted access to agency systems of the giant USAID. When senior officials refused, by Saturday they were put on leave.
“Spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Musk boasted on X.
“It became apparent that it’s not an apple with a worm it in,” Musk said in a live session on X Spaces early Monday. “What we have is just a ball of worms. You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair.” — AP News
Elon Musk and DOGE closed the doors, and sent the head honcho’s packing. One officeworker said staff rushed to take down things like Pride Flags and incriminating books (whatever that means), and now they have lost access to their computers, and the site is down.
As Donald Trump and Elon Musk cut back rogue government agencies, USAID looks more and more like a giant money laundering racket. It has (or had) 10,000 employees and a budget of $50 billion dollars. It’s presented as a humanitarian aid group, but the AID in US-AID means the US Agency for International Development which turns out to mean anything and everything. The humanitarian projects include giving $53 million dollars to the starving EcoHealth Alliance which used that to pay for bioweapon research in Wuhan, China, helping to create Covid-19. USAID also funded the production of heroin in Afghanistan. The WhiteHouse revealed that USAID also funded DEI projects in Serbia, and DEI musicals in Ireland. They spent US Taxpayer money on transgender operas in Colombia and a trans comic book in Peru.
As Mike Benz describes it, USAID was the Ultimate Nerve Center Of A Rogue Foreign Policy Establishment
Mike Benz, former State Department Cyber expert, has studied USAID closely and says:
“USAID grantee NGOs literally take their USAID money then turn around and lobby all key members of Congress to give more and more US taxpayer money to USAID each year in the budget. USAID buys an army of lobbyists with your tax dollars to give it more of your money.“
He also wonders why USAID gave $27 million to the US fiscal sponsor of the group controlling Soros-funded prosecutors and telling them which American citizens and politicians to prosecute?
Indeed, somehow USAID is also one of the “BBC Media Actions” top ten donors? Go figure? It’s just the US of A helping out third world countries, right?
As Mike Benz said: the “BBC was in direct cahoots with USAID leadership on Internet censorship efforts to crush BBC’s online populist news competitors since 2017. I went over 9 hours of receipts on this in a 3-part private livestream lecture for my X subscribers”.
Ron Paul agrees — USAID is a key component of US Regime change, meddling in foreign affairs. The news from Ukraine is essentially being controlled by USAID.
How sweet — USAID provides bioweapons to poor nations that can’t afford their own
Mind-blowing 🤯 https://t.co/Vv7PnkaFYz
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 3, 2025
Mike Benz — “The Blob uses AID workers to get s*** done”
Benz considers USAID as the core tool the Deep State use to make things happen. He argues that the State Department can’t get directly involved in other nations politics — not in underhanded ways, and nor can the CIA openly do that, but correctly funded aid-workers can. He doesn’t think the funding of DEI and Pride marches is necessarily just crazy lefty religious zeal, it’s a strategy he calls “tactical wokeness in service of statecraft.”. The idea, he argues, is that to topple governments — like say, Bangladesh or Cuba — a bit of tactical wokeness would inflame and divide populations who then rise up and protest and unsettle the elected governments that the CIA don’t like. The DEI Wokeness programs are designed to incite street riots and sometimes “color revolutions”. He gives one example where, the International Republican Institute (IRI)* funded dance festivals and woke identity events in Bangladesh, and minority rappers that culminated in throngs of street protests that forced the democratically elected leader to leave the country in a helicopter, as a Clinton Global Initiative fellow was installed as the new President, and they cancelled the elections.
The push to censor:
The US State department created the CIA to do the dirty jobs that it wanted to do. Then in the 1970s the CIA got caught, so they captured the USAID program, and according to Mike Benz, used the “aid” program to get inside the doors and mess with politics at arms length, in a dirty way. Now that they are being caught again, it’s no accident they’ve become the leading sponsor of censorship programs all over the world so that their dirty work isn’t discussed and unravelled in public.
More on that soon…
The Background on the Deep State: Dont miss the first post on how the US intelligence agencies started rigging elections in 1948, and Mike Benz’s “History of the Intelligence State” see it here. It is essential background to understanding how the Blob grew out of good intentions after WWII and metastasized into a global monster. The Spy agency became the Lie Agency.
__________
* is the Republican arm of the NED (National Endowment for Democracy.).
This is a great summary and exposition Jo. The history and extent of this monster and the battle to overcome it needs to become widespread public knowledge.
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And Sputnik reports that USAid was kicked out of Russia in 2012; meanwhile we in the west were oblivious to what was going on under the covers. 13 years for the truth to reach the people paying for it all!
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I think the Russkies also stopped any George Soros influences in their country. In fact, he may be a wanted man in their jurisdictions. During the last 4 years it was ” who would you rather, Putin or Biden?” I think there were many Americans who may have picked the former.
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Downstream Layoffs Expected to be ‘Catastrophic’, in the Multiple Thousands Within DC, as a result of USAID Pause
February 4, 2025 – Sundance
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was again asked about the USAID review pause and the likely impact to the matrix of NGO’s and financial dependents, including the families of DC politicians, if funding is not quickly restarted.
And
Rank and Vile FBI Agents Who Weaponized Govt File Lawsuit to Hide Their Identity
February 4, 2025 – Sundance
Oh, this is rich. “The lawsuit, which claims violations of First Amendment rights and of the federal Privacy Act, asks to bar the Justice Department from aggregating and disseminating the identities of FBI agents and employees that could tie them to the Jan. 6 and Mar-a-Lago cases.” [Read Full Article]
The ‘rank and vile’ FBI agents decry violations of their “Free Speech” and “Privacy” after those same FBI agents violated U.S. citizen free speech (see “Twitter files”) and privacy (see FISA-702). [Read Their Lawsuit Here]
Seriously, the arrogance, hubris and sentiment of being above all accountability is just too thick. You just cannot make this stuff up.
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Well it seems there might be $50 billion available if they have a legitimate purpose for it.
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It’s interesting how the Left are in Meltdown about the closure of this corrupt and useless organisation.
Charity begins at home. Leftists should donate their own money plus labour to worthy charities like many conservatives do.
I do plenty of charity work and bushwalking (hiking) in the “environment” and I’ve never seen a committed Leftist at either activity, both of which they claim to have an interest in.
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If now-out-of-work Leftists want something useful to do, go the Third World countries like Nepal and PERSONALLY pick up rubbish and also teach the locals not to litter. All that rubbish looks disgusting and that’s where rubbish in the ocean comes from.
Not one cent of USAID actually went to useful activities like that.
Now Lefties, this is your opportunity to make something of your lives.
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So danged glad now that Trump lost in 2020.
That gave him and his people four years to do their homework, to find the places where a small lever could upend the most corruption and socialism. It gave him time to get lined up with the Elons of the world, who could provide crucial aid in his fight. And it gave the US conservative world time enough to get really, really mad.
He could never have been this effective had he won in 2020. So, thank goodness for that thieving Joe B!
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I fully agree.
Apparently there are three famous Chinese curses, not just #1 below:
1) May you live in interesting times
2) May you come to the attention of powerful people
3) May you get what you wished for
The Deep State got what it wished for in 2020.
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Plus Biden soiled their image so badly, there’s a good chance Americans will still be fuming in four years time.
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Holy cow. I was trying to write something similar, including some of the comments you have received. Struggling, I went and did something else only to come back to see my thoughts were already here. Amazing. 🤠
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It gave him time to get lined up with the Elons of the world
Which imho will be one of the corner stones of his success. First time it was all about Trump and making it personal and attacking the person is one of the Rules for Radicals employed to nullify the opposition by the left/communists. Now when you think of the “Trump” 2nd administration suddenly there is Elon and Kennedy and others. It is NOT just Trump. The left’s manipulation of public opinion at a single target can’t be so easily channeled. Woohoo the times they are achangin – even for a short time.
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On the face of it, I agree with you. I love watching the lefty heads explode. The CIA and FBI and USAID and soooo many more agencis are things that the world would be so much better without. I really pray we are getting what we think we are getting. But sometimes I wonder, is the new regime able to do with public support what “the other side”, if it really is the other side, could not get done. I am feeling herded atm, off landlines, onto smartphones, off Auzzie controlled NBN network, on to Elon’s global service, which I cant go outside at night and look at the sky without it dominating the view (or the day without it being disturbed by trails). Elon has never been an angel, and lots of his money came from tax payer funded and govt mandated schemes like big batteries and Tesla cars. So he has been on the govt teat forever also. I pray, I really pray, that these guys are the ones people think they are (recently), and not the opposite. Remember Trump is Mr Warp speed, and he still backs mRNA tech. If the trails in the sky disappear, or better still are fully and openly discussed in public with full public disclosure of when, who, how, why, and with what, then I might feel that things are changing.
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Always wise to keep the other possibilities in mind. But Trump wouldn’t be working so hard to get RFK Jr in charge of Health if he was blindly pro mRNA. The medical experts bamboozled Trump in 2020, but this time he has surrounded himself with better experts.
Musk makes mistakes, but he put his business empire at risk by buying Twitter then openly backing Trump. He would have lost everything if Trump lost.
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I smile every time I recall that if Trump had served his second term immediately after his first term, none of this cleansing of the Augean stables would have happened.
The four intervening years emboldened his enemies into trying to eliminate him, which ironically made them much easier to identify. And their shamelessly partisan behaviour brought former Democrats like Kennedy, Musk and Gabbard out of the remains of that political party into a coalition of common sense under DJT.
Unfortunately there are plenty of people here in Canada whose opinions are shaped by news agencies which can’t bring themselves to tell the truth about the corruption that is being exposed. So Trump’s actions are interpreted as some sort of lunatic bullying rather than a well-considered, high-tempo counter-attack on corruption.
This feels like an inflection point in the decay curve of western society. Will it be enough? God knows, but at least it’s a start.
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We can only hope that Musk can persist and shut down many more of these taxpayer funded wasteful left wing disasters.
But we should be careful that the Demorats can’t quickly reinvent these poisonous groups if they win again in the future. And that should worry all of us, even here in Australia.
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I am watching this stuff every day including Mike Benz’s comments and it is mind blowing what is happening. I don’t think I have ever seen political reform of this magnitude not just in my lifetime, but in recorded modern history.
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For every one of these ‘scam’ projects being funded by USAID, there must have been a document submitted requesting the funds. Surely that is the place to start unraveling this mess.
If the people proposing the projects are placed under the spotlight, how many of them will turn out to be benefactors of the grants that they are nominating? And if it can be shown that there is a cash bonus system in place, or kick backs, then it must follow that legal problems should arise too.
Alternatively, the projects are suspicious and need to end but it’s all above board when it comes to the proposal and approval process.
Somehow, I doubt that the alternative is likely in 100% of the cases. I would suggest that this is a money laundering process, well organised and well rewarding for those involved. Heads will roll over this. Lawyers are going to get rich.
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That’s what it’s about. With a ocean of money and a ‘snow storm’ of documents, nearly anything could be hidden in plain sight.
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I wonder if USaid are responsible for the flood of Fentanyl coming over the southern border, most likely sourced from guess-who.
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Those documents are well hidden, and it would take forever to even uncover a fraction of them. Which is why DOGE went the other direction … take control of the agency that cuts the checks and stop payment on EVERYTHING. That way, the cockroaches have to come out of the woodwork and justify their phoney-baloney grants if they ever want to see another check.
Why go looking for them when you can make them come to you? Every single program should have to justify itself with a cost-benefit analysis before it gets another dime of taxpayer money. And put a rule in place where EVERY future grant has to be transparent and available for public scrutiny and challenge if it passes the cost-benefit stage. Then roll what little is left of the operation back into the state department where it can be overseen by political appointees who are accountable to elected officials.
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Steve,
The people receiving the money are always going to ask for it, they are easily identified. It could easily be argued that the LGBTABC funded follies, located all over the world are entitled to monies promised. They could even argue that they are bound, by law, to receive the funds as promised.
My point was that the people who nominate these brain fart projects need to be identified so that they can be removed from the future decision making processes. And if applicable, audit the funds and if any sign of a kick back is found, then hand the investigation over to the correct authorities for prosecution.
If you don’t cut off the head, the tail will keep wagging, if not now, then possibly in just another 4 years.
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For a couple of decades, western citizens have slowly been suffocating in a miasma of leftist propaganda, an unrelenting stink of anti-conservativism. We often say the ‘Long March’ is the culprit for this.
But even that thinking was naive. Trump and Musk are revealing a much more effective yet insidious fungus that has granted control of everything that matters, using taxpayers’ own money to do so. No wonder conservatives had come to believe they were swimming against the tide.
But it was all a lie. The left’s success has been the result of large scale corruption, not ‘winning votes’ with popular policies.
And this has only just started. Trump has caught them out by moving so fast, so soon. Chopping off tentacles one by one is obviously a good thing, but more important is the light that is being shone into dark places, revealing all of this to citizens.
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Is AusAID a mini me to USAID?
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yes
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Absolutely. I have been saying for quite some time that many government programs, including international aid, are actually designed to feather the nests of people here in Australia. Most of the funding for indigenous programs never gets to the remote communities that arguably need it, instead ‘feeding the machine’ and perpetuating the political and financial corruption.
There’s a reason why pollies on relatively low salaries somehow manage to buy oceanside mansions and get appointed to lucrative board positions when they retire.
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I’ve been following this for days on, where else- X. It’s seriously hilarious. I don’t think the mainstream media have even gone close to reporting on it yet. Mr Musk and DOGE have employed these brilliant minded geeks to trawl through USAIDS electronic files and transactions. I have this vision of some ex “ gamers” working long hours, sleeping on couches in the USAID building and living off pop tarts and Red Bulls. How did they choose USAID as their first target? Somehow they were able to identify USAID as the department with the least compliance to the President’s executive orders. Based on that, they moved in and started sweeping.
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It’s like flicking the light on in the basement and seeing rats scurrying every which way, the four year hiatus certainly wasn’t wasted.
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Without evidence… media knobs are decrying Trump, Musk, et al closing down America’s kind gift of “AID” to the world, yet as we know – and Jo reiterates so well – those 3 letters do not mean “aid” in the way most people understand it to be.
Similarly, the USA PATRIOT Act 2001, signed into law by Bush Junior (R) with a little help from Cheney, Rumsfeld & Co. – very conveniently after a certain incident – was an acronym word-salad meaning the complete opposite of what it appeared to be, ergo –
Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct T….rism
Bush Jr’s replacement, B H Obama – whose own mother was an employee of USAID in various guises throughout numerous countries – then extended parts of the snoopy spooky Act, until its demise in 2019/20 when, very conveniently, yet another certain incident occurred requiring yet more ‘help’ from government agencies.
Good riddance, they shall not be missed.
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The Road to Hell is paved with good intentions … like USAID.
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I wonder which activist groups in Australia might find their funding cut.
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Bomber pilots have a saying that you know you are over the target when you start catching flak. There is a whole lot of flak flying around right now over USAID.
The more deep staters and Democrats squeal, the more convinced I am Musk and DOGE are over the target.
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I wonder why other aspects of USAID are not reported.
“Elon Musk wants to bring down USAID, calling it a “criminal” agency on his X platform. But he’s also done business with it.
Over the last four years, the U.S. government’s humanitarian and development arm has spent as much as $1 million on SpaceX’s Starlink terminals, federal contract records show, bringing them to Zimbabwe and South Africa, the country where Musk was born.
Its most significant partnership, though, saw USAID working with SpaceX to send 5,000 Starlink terminals, worth some $3 million, to Ukraine for free shortly after the war broke out in 2022. In November last year, Musk tweeted on his X platform, “A major factor for why Ukraine was NOT overrun by Russia is the Starlink support I provided, at great risk to SpaceX cyber & physical attack by Russian military forces… Starlink is the BACKBONE of Ukrainian military communications at the front lines, because everything else has been blown up or jammed by Russia.”
While SpaceX had been praised for providing free Starlink terminals to Ukraine, helping speed up communications on the battlefield with Russia, its work in the war torn country wasn’t without controversy. Reports had suggested Ukraine was furious after Musk cut off Starlink internet access for drones during a planned 2022 attack on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. U.S. lawmakers have also voiced concerns that Russia had illegally acquired Starlink terminals. Musk denied any had been sold to Moscow, which would have violated U.S. sanctions.
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Its good that the have followed the money with this initial move. Cutting out this major streal of money laundering will have a big impact around the world. There has been mounting noise about the political and societal disruption that myriad NGOs funded by USAID were causing.
Hopefully under the State Dept useful humanitarian aid can be deployed to people who need it.
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I’ve experienced a couple of prog acquaintances complain about Trump’s ‘attack’ on USAID.
I’m pretty sure a week ago they had little idea what USAID was.
Still don’t.
However, they’re terribly upset about the tyranny.
(I just realized they’re also terribly upset about Climate Change with little knowledge of the subject. I think I detect a pattern.)
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Thanks Jo,
Vital to have all this brought to light.
Super inspiring to hear of the shutdown and cessation of “loss” of taxpayers hard earned.
Lessons may even be shown from the exposure and prosecution of the major Worms behind this ugliness.
Who knows: there may follow a period of say fifty years of relatively honest government expenditure.
We pray.
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Hidden under all this, is simple fraud. No doubt, massive fraud is there too, but let’s look at one simple scenario.
The decision is made to spend a significant amount of money on books about anal sex for BackOfBeyondLand. A muslim country.
The decision is made to print the books in the U.S.
A suitable Democrat Printing Company is found, and is given the contract. (Possibly by rota. IN DC, ALL the Printers would be Democrats.)
The Printer prints 10,100 books at a normal cost per book.
The printer charges USAID 200% markup. More if USAID agrees.
USAID sends the Books to the country. Ten employees go with them, for a nice first class junket with adequate (excessive) out of pocket expenses.
Who goes? Whoever’s turn it is.
Said country accepts the books. Said employees have a great time, then go home. (Alcohol is allowed in the tourist centres. Alcohol is profitable.)
The muslim country is not the slightest interested in the books, nor their subject, (never were) so sells them back to public schools in the U.S.
The result?
The Democrat printer gets a lot of money for nothing.
The employees get a nice junket, and some spending money.
The muslims get some cash, instead of worthless books.
The public schools get some books cheap, that suit their indoctrination program.
And this is just one possibility.
Multiply the fraud by numbers, and the $amount by numbers, and you have some serious money laundering.
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This will be a big red flag for the Lefties here engaged in similar activities. . . and you’d expect the industrial-shredders to be on stand-by, if ‘Handsome Boy’ and his merry band of undergraduate Commies get thrown out at the upcoming election.
They certainly wouldn’t want Jacinta Price looking through the files . . .
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Here’s the infographic for the BBC Media Action funding.
https://imgur.com/tDS7d8u
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On X, (and possibly elsewhere) are several (lots of) posting by a “DataRepublican (small r)” which is mind boggling in it’s examination of USAID.
I don’t know who he is, nor what resources he has, but he is tearing this thing apart.
I see Musk has posted an emoji of “a face with a monocle” so he’s interested.
It’s well worth a look if you have the time!
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